Exclusive survey shows America's CEOs enjoyed pay hikes of up to 40% last year  with one chief executive earning $145m

Chief executive pay has roared back after two years of stagnation and decline. America's top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year, according to the largest survey of US CEO pay. The dramatic bounceback comes as the latest government figures show wages for the majority of Americans are failing to keep up with inflation.

America's highest paid executive took home more than $145.2m, and as stock prices recovered across the board, the median value of bosses' profits on stock options rose 70% in 2010, from $950,400 to $1.3m. The news comes against the backdrop of an Occupy Wall Street movement that has focused Washington's attention on the pay packages of America's highest paid.

I don't believe in class warfare nor do I want the government setting wages however I do believe that in many cases executive compensation is egregious.Ronald Williams, former head of Aetna, a health insurer, exercised 2.4m options for a profit of $50.4m. Aetna's stock price declined by 70% from when Williams assumed the role of CEO in February 2006 until his retirement. At pharmacy chain CVS, Thomas Ryan made a $28m profit on his options. During Ryan's 13-year tenure as CEO, CVS Caremark's stock price decreased almost 54%.

Unfortunately, the companies aren’t paying what they think a CEO is worth. It’s now become a rigged game, where you have inter-connected CEO’s sitting on each other’s boards guarenteeing out of control wages to each other, regardless of a companies performance or whether a company can even afford to pay it out.

If the CEO’s for their interest destroy a company, they just move on to the next one.

Just like John Corzine.

7
posted on 12/15/2011 4:58:06 AM PST
by Jonty30
(If a person won't learn under the best of times, then he must learn under the worst of times.)

If the CEO’s “destroy a company” the “next one” will profit as a result.

All of this discussion is ass backward. Just like the corporate jet issue. I don’t want the CEO of Ford showing up to meet, say, the Japanese Prime Minister, after booking a coach flight on Southwest Airlines. I want him to say “be right there” and then arrive in something taht looks like Queen Amidala’s spaceship.

Our companies, CEO’s and people should be the richest in the world. Making our CEO’s be humble is like playng no winner softball games. It will not produce Babe Ruth.

Sadly you are mistaken, the CEO types you know who are idiots are still the best money can buy. There is a competition for them just like for football players or anything else. And most pro football players are smelly and stupid, as well as possessing mediocre talents compared to the top stars. Most NFL quarterbacks “suck” because money has brought in the best there are, and those are limited.

Believe me, I’ve been in the corporate world and I have seen what you have seen. That’s real life.

There are also lots of drunk, crooked, etc. plumbers. And the market system with some reasonable regulation will bring up the best. But you will NOT get the best plumbers or anything else by having Barack Obama and the democrats in Congress limit their pay.

A CEO may destroy a company just like anyone else screws anything else up in this life. I hired a guy to redo a bathroom. He’s in the business, has experience, was recommended. He was an angry incompetent probably drunk. He won’t be used by me again and he will not do as well as the guy I use now who is great and always in demand.

By what method would you prevent the first guy from getting paid? Or getting paid as much as he asked for?

Corzine IS getting screwed now for what he did. paying him less would have prevented his screw up? I think not. It will bring in even more incompetents.

Just like paying doctors less will not bring in all teh wonderful “better” doctors because they want to help people, like teh insane liberals say.

If the government limits CEO pay at private companies, the net result will be less successful American companies. tehre can be no other result.

And passing a law that they only get paid based on success is just a perversion of what already exists. It will take all risk out of the system because CEO’s will be afraid to take any. That’s what Barney Frank was after.

I invested in a tiny biotech. They were trying to cure some of life’s most devasating illnesses with gene therapy. Never made any money, failed after years and they finally changed directions. Produced a breakthrough or two along the way that were bought by other companies.

During this whole time, the stock message board was a lesson in class envy and idiocy. Constant calls to arrest the board of directors, the CEO was being paid “too much”, and there were constant calls to liquidate the company and give the money (Of course there wouldn’t be any) to the shareholders.

Many of the message board posters admitted they did NOT own stock in the company! That’s what you’re dealing with here.

I invested in that company knowing it was a risk. They brought in a well known and expensive CEO in an effort to achieve credibility in the industry, with government regulators, etc. There will be a hundred or a thousand companies like them down the tubes, and the CEO’s well paid, before one company cures the cancers, heart conditions, childhood diseases, etc., they were working on.

Without the money to be made in that field by CEO’s, researchers, etc., without the risks and these little companies trying and faling, we will never cure the diseases. Nor will anyone make money in biotech without those risks.

But the kooks on the stock message board wanted to pay the CEO nothing, fire him, arrest him, burn the “evil” company to the ground.

“Ronald Williams, former head of Aetna, a health insurer, exercised 2.4m options for a profit of $50.4m. Aetna’s stock price declined by 70% from when Williams assumed the role of CEO in February 2006 until his retirement.” COMMENT: Aetna’s stock price in January 2006 was $44.77 and is $39.28 today, a 12% decrease.

The source for my stock prices is GOOGLE FINANCE SITE.

37
posted on 12/15/2011 5:51:40 AM PST
by BilLies
(Obama Allahu Akbar....the facilitator of the modern Caliphate from the Pacific to the Atlantic.)

That sounds nice until you consider the incestuous nature of corporate boards.

Capitalism, like any other institution, requires maintenance. If capitalists get lazy and greedy (i.e. the corrupt back-scratching satirized in the "Dilbert" cartoon at the top of the thread), the institution decays and becomes incapable of sustaining itself against attack.

Some "capitalists" are a greater threat to capitalism than the entire OWS clown brigade put together.

More attempts at class warfare, it is no one’s business how much CEOs make. What ever the make is neither taking money from anyone else or giving it to them. This is BS and goes along with the frickin’ OWS BS, trying to bring down capitalism.

If it worked, Id be fine with it too. But its not working any longer. Would you really say that American companies are out-performing the rest of the world?

Tell us how CEOs making money is causing the down turn in the economy. Don't you think that Government interference is actually the cause of the bad economy or haven't you been paying attention. The reason capitalism doesn't seem to be working is because this country isn't capitalistic anymore, it is fascism at its finest.

Over regulation, over taxation and stupid rules such at Nafta have brought our country to it's knees, not capitalism.

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